Jasper Kent - Twelve

After two more days of walking and one more night's cautious sleep, I made it to Goryachkino. Our prearranged meeting place was a farm outbuilding near the main road. The French were only a few versts away when I arrived late in the afternoon, so the people of the area had already abandoned their homes, evaporating into the hinterland before the scorching wave of the French advance.

I scouted around, and soon found a message scratched into one of the walls.

8 – 24 – 18 – M

Maks had been there, on the eighth month, the twenty-fourth day, the eighteenth hour – scarcely a day earlier. It was a system we had worked out back in Moscow, even before the Oprichniki had arrived, to cope with the problem of trying to meet up and communicate while we pursued the moving target of the Grande Armée.

The idea had been Vadim's. He had taken it from the experiences of the 'little warriors' of the Spanish peninsula, who had been harassing Bonaparte's troops for years without ever forming up into an organized army. (Though the joyous news had not yet reached us, the tide in Spain had at last turned against Bonaparte. Only days earlier, Wellington had occupied Madrid.) We had studied maps of the whole area where we thought we might be operating, most of which we were quite familiar with anyway. We chose small villages, geographical features and isolated buildings and made a long list, assigning each one a unique combination of a letter and number. Thus any meeting we chose could be described simply by a date, a time and the code for the location. It took just four pieces of information: month, day, hour, location.

If one of us arrived at a meeting place, we could simply leave a message, scratched into a tree trunk or chalked on a wall, as to when we had been there, and another telling when and where the next meeting should be. A message would be signed with the author's initial. If more information needed to be conveyed, then a letter could be hidden. The character 'G' – for peesmo – would indicate the presence of such a letter.

We had chosen meeting places as far afield as Orsha, Tula and Vladimir, but even in the city of Moscow itself, much as we hoped the French would not get that far, we had put dozens of locations on the list. Once the Oprichniki arrived, we had given them copies of the list as well.

And so Maks' message told me that he had been here, but not where he had gone. There was no sign of him now. He might have moved on or he might return, and Dmitry and Vadim could still arrive, so I waited.

Vadim arrived first, and Dmitry soon after. They had been luckier than I in keeping hold of their horses, and thus they were both less exhausted. I showed them Maks' message and briefly told them my adventures since we had last met. Vadim found much that was familiar.

'Well, at least you've seen more of yours than I have of my lot,' he said. 'I woke up after our first night's camp, and they'd just gone.'

'What about all that "We sleep by day and kill at night"?' I asked, badly impersonating Pyetr's accent.

'I thought I'd managed to dissuade them from that, at least until we'd got close to the enemy,' Vadim replied, 'but I guess they were just playing me along. They probably rode off the moment my eyes closed.'

'So what have you been doing since?'

'Nothing of much benefit. Keeping an eye on the French. I could have gone back to Moscow for all the use I've been.'

'And what are the French up to?' asked Dmitry.

'All set for a big battle tomorrow, around a village called Borodino – just south-east of here.' He opened a map and showed us.

'And we're going to engage them?' I asked.

'Looks like it. It's all Kutuzov's idea.'

'Will we win?'

Vadim shrugged his shoulders. 'If we do, it will halt them. If not – well, we had to make some sort of stand before they reached Moscow.'

'What about you, Dmitry?' I asked. 'How quickly did your Oprichniki give you the slip?'

'They didn't,' he replied. 'I mean, they go off and do what they do, but they've kept in touch. I know where they are now, for instance. They're setting up an ambush on one of the roads the French are using to bring in more troops. It's not far from here.' Our expressions must have conveyed scepticism. 'I'll show you,' he insisted.

Dmitry led us south, on foot, closer to the French lines, until we came to the edge of a small ridge. It was completely dark now, with still no moon to shed any light on what Dmitry wanted us to see, but beside the road that the ridge overlooked was a farmhouse and light shone from the window. The road was quiet.

'So where are they?' asked Vadim.

'Wait,' replied Dmitry. 'The road's being used by French troops. See what happens when they come along.'

Ever since my first brief battle alongside the Oprichniki, I had wanted to ask Dmitry what he knew about them – what he had held back from us. It seemed that I would not need to ask; I would be shown. We had been waiting for almost half an hour when we finally heard the tramp, tramp, tramp of marching feet. A small group of French infantry, perhaps thirty in all, was advancing down the road. The men at the front and back of the platoon each carried a lantern, adding to the light from the farmhouse. The men marched onwards and had almost completely passed when, in total silence, a door to the farmhouse opened and out raced two dark figures. They grabbed the hindmost man – who carried one of the lanterns – and dragged him back inside. The whole incident took place without a sound and in mere seconds. It was like the tongue of a toad flicking out and grabbing an unsuspecting fly.

Someone towards the back of the platoon noticed first not that his comrade had gone, but that the light had gone. He turned, and then shouted to his lieutenant to stop.

'That was Varfolomei and Ioann, I think,' Dmitry told us, by way of commentary.

'Hardly a significant loss to the French army,' said Vadim sardonically.

'It's not over yet,' said Dmitry.

The platoon had broken ranks to see what had become of the missing man. As we looked, we saw the same two dark figures erupt from the house again, this time taking back with them the lead man – the man with the remaining lantern. At almost the same instant, the light inside the building was extinguished. We, and the French platoon, were suddenly made blind by the darkness. But we could still hear.

The Frenchmen began calling to one another; at first, simply remarks along the lines of 'What happened?' and 'Are you there?' Then the shouts began to be interrupted by screams, most of them the short, curtailed screams of men taken by surprise and dying quickly. As each scream denoted the death of a man, so the number speaking to each other became fewer, but also louder and more desperate. Towards the end, only one young French voice remained.

'Are you there? Lieutenant? Sir? Who's there? Jacques? Who is there? I'm-' and then a brief yelp ended his one-sided conversation.

I have seen and heard hundreds of men die, many by my own hand, but those thirty deaths and that friendless, lone voice were as sickening as anything I had witnessed up until that time.

Dmitry, on the other hand, expressed his admiration. 'Impressive, eh? Thirty men taken out by three. And in, what? Two minutes? Not enough to win us the war, I know, but it can only help.'

We had only seen two figures, but Dmitry evidently knew better. Once the lights had been extinguished, there could have been any number of Oprichniki out there, attacking those soldiers, and Vadim and I would have been none the wiser.

'Frenchmen,' was all Vadim could mutter grimly, but it was some consolation. They were the invaders. We could defend by any means we chose.

'Let's go down there,' said Dmitry, eagerly. We followed him down the ridge and to the road. The impression that the whole scene had been presented for us – for Vadim and me – was growing within me. The Oprichniki probably did work in exactly this way at other times, but on this particular occasion they had known that they had an audience, known that Dmitry would lead us to see them at work. The intent was as much to conceal as to reveal, but I realized I would get nothing more by asking Dmitry directly.